Medical Mobilization for the Right to Therapeutic Abortion in 19th-Century Brazil – Join My Talk at EHESS

Medical Mobilization for the Right to Therapeutic Abortion in 19th-Century Brazil – Join My Talk at EHESS

On Monday, April 28, I’ll be giving a talk in Portuguese at EHESS (Paris) on how Brazilian physicians mobilized throughout the 19th century to secure the legal right to perform therapeutic abortions. The event is part of the series Brésil(s): ongoing investigations and recent work in the social sciences, organized by CRBC and the journal Brésil(s).

My research begins with the earliest legal exception to abortion in Brazil: since 1890, the Penal Code has allowed the termination of pregnancy when the pregnant woman’s life is at risk. What I seek to understand is how this provision came to be. My hypothesis is that it was the result of a long and persistent campaign led by physicians, who sought to legitimize their authority to act in the name of “saving the mother.”

Drawing on medical and legal sources from the time, I examine the strategies doctors used to justify abortion as a therapeutic intervention—and how they simultaneously distanced themselves from laywomen who performed abortions as a means of fertility control. This is, ultimately, a story about contested authority, language, and legitimacy surrounding life and death in childbirth.

The session will take place from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. (Paris time) / 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. (Brasília time).

If you’d like to join online, just send a message to monica-raisa.schpun@ehess.fr .

I’d love to share this research with you!